Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Iraq (news - web sites)'s insurgency will last many years, a senior U.S. official in Baghdad predicted Wednesday, tempering expectations that the success of the recent election would help end the violence that still threatens to undermine Iraq's journey toward democracy.

"I think it's going to take quite a number of years. I do not see any early end," the official said, in a sober assessment of the likely impact of the election on an insurgency fueled largely by Sunni resentment of the political process.

Iraq's Electoral Commission still has not finished counting the ballots, and officials said Wednesday that the final result, expected Thursday, would be delayed several days because of a variety of alleged discrepancies surrounding some ballot boxes.

Ballots from about 300 boxes will be recounted because of the allegations, which include suspicions of tampering, ballot stuffing and other irregularities. It wasn't clear how many votes will be affected by the review, but many of the boxes are believed to have come from the mostly Sunni province of Nineveh, home to the restive city of Mosul.

According to the last partial tally, the greatest share of votes has gone to a coalition of Shiite parties, with an alliance of the main Kurdish parties in second place, leaving Sunnis with little representation in the National Assembly that will form the next government and write the constitution.

No overall turnout figures have been released, but the partial returns and the size of the vote received by the Shiite and Kurdish alliances suggest few Sunnis voted, calling into question their likely acceptance of the new government that will be formed.

Although the insurgency failed in its threat to significantly disrupt the voting, it is also becoming clear that the election is unlikely to make a major dent in the insurgency's base of support, an assortment of committed Islamic radicals and former regime supporters as well as disaffected Sunnis opposed to the U.S. presence.

The American official, briefing reporters in Baghdad on condition of anonymity, said that the insurgency will not be defeated by military means alone and that a political settlement that gives Sunnis reason to have faith in the democratic process also will be needed.

"The most optimistic scenario is that you have on the one hand a set of political developments that increasingly convince Sunnis that they can live successfully and be reasonably well protected . . . not as an oppressed minority," he said. "And militarily you put more and more pressure on--and then it will still take years.

"It is political and military. They are not alternatives," he added.

However, he predicted that within a year, Iraq's regenerated security forces will be well placed to take on the bulk of the responsibility for fighting the insurgency, with U.S. troops playing a backup role. "I think we will make a lot of progress in the next year to having Iraqis in the lead," he said.

After a brief postelection lull, the pace of the violence has picked up. On Wednesday, a journalist, a government official and three politicians were assassinated and a top police officer was abducted from his car in Baghdad.

The journalist, Abdul Hussein Khazal, was the Basra correspondent for the U.S.-funded Al-Hurra television network in Iraq, a member of a Shiite political party and a spokesman for the local council, leaving it unclear precisely why he was targeted. He was gunned down by assailants at his home in Basra along with his 3-year-old son.

A director general of the Housing Ministry was shot dead in Baghdad, and a member of the Kurdish Democratic Party was killed when the car in which he was traveling with three colleagues was ambushed on the capital's notoriously violent Haifa Street, The Associated Press reported.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed, one in an attack on his patrol in Balad, north of Baghdad, and another by a gunshot wound in Balad, the U.S. military said.

The military also announced Wednesday that a U.S. soldier was killed Sunday in Mosul when his patrol came under fire.

I'm sure it will survive a long time, just not in the capacity that it is today. Think about it. If Canada somehow had a real army and took over the US people would fight to the death to make sure they never succeed and make it hard as possible.

1. Rising in revolt against established authority, especially a government. 2. Rebelling against the leadership of a political party.

n.

One who is insurgent.

I would think most countries would have insurgents.

--------------------It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. -Andre Gide

"Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives."

The Taliban is very different from an insurgency. It was a cladestine government that formed rather quickly without any real organization in the mid 90's. The Taliban is a far cry from the Mujahideen of the 1980's, and definately a far cry from the pan-Arab emotional resistance in Iraq that we see today. What's happening right now in Iraq isn't much different from the resistance against the Soviet occupation. They are pretty much applying a 'Pressure & Time' strategy in Iraq. Insurgents don't expect to take over Baghdad. Their mode of operation is to keep the occupation bogged down for years until fiscally the occupation is no longer possible for the coalition to maintain.

Quote:zahudulallah said:Their mode of operation is to keep the occupation bogged down for years until fiscally the occupation is no longer possible for the coalition to maintain.

Not only fiscally, but morale wise as well.

--------------------Money doesn't grow on trees, but deficits do grow under Bushes.

You can accept, reject, or examine and test any new idea that comes to you. The wise man chooses the third way.- Tom Willhite

Disclaimer: I reserve the right to change my opinions should I become aware of additional facts, the falsification of information or different perspectives. Articles written by others which I post may not necessarily reflect my opinions in part or in whole, my opinions may be in direct opposition, the topic may be one on which I have yet to formulate an opinion or have doubts about, an article may be posted solely with the intent to stimulate discussion or contemplation.

Yes... in the 1980's there was a spiritual euphoria in the Muslim world over the dedication of the Mujahideen against the Soviets. It was a period in modern history where many Muslims, Shias and Sunnis, put their diffences aside in order to struggle against an alien power that was attempting to colonize them. Muslim governments also put their differences aside, and the East Indians of Pakistan and the Arabs of Saudi Arabia cooperated in order to assist the growing resistance in Afghanistan.

Quote:bi0 said:yes, I agree.I believe OBL wanted the US to invade a country with the chance of getting stuck there like he experienced with the Communists.and we did exactly just that.

In the October Surprise tape, OBL gloated how he outsmarted Bush because Bush became "dazzled" by the treasures (oil) in Iraq. OBL ain't stupid. He knew long before 9-11 that if the United States would ever dare to invade and occupy an Arab country that they would have hell to pay. Americans actually believed they would be greeted as liberators when they marched into Iraq - what were they thinking? This is an Arab country we're talking about; and Arabs are currently in a very deep seated intellectual struggle with the United States as a result of the state of Israel.

Quote:zahudulallah said:What's happening right now in Iraq isn't much different from the resistance against the Soviet occupation. They are pretty much applying a 'Pressure & Time' strategy in Iraq. Insurgents don't expect to take over Baghdad. Their mode of operation is to keep the occupation bogged down for years until fiscally the occupation is no longer possible for the coalition to maintain.

You've hit the proverbial nail on the head there. US troops, ostensibly there to "liberate" and maintain order are doing everything but these things. Once the US pulls out of there, (hopefully soon, but not bloody likely ) I do believe things will settle quite a bit....